Article by
Barbados Today

Published on
March 6, 2015

Barbados Turf Club president Sir David Seale will be looking to increase his Sandy Lane Barbados Gold Cup winners to eight, when the region’s most prestigious horse race runs off at the Garrison Savannah on Saturday.

Sir David, who has three horses entered in the 1,800 metres event, already has seven Gold Cup winners – the most by a single owner.

Sir David Seale (right) going after Gold Cup win number eight on Saturday.

He will be represented by Marcus Antonius, Aristodemus, and Daunting David, all imported horses. Actually, ifwere to register what would be considered a surprising victory, it would be his second in the big race having already won the event in 2013.

Also, if Daunting David were to win the race, it would be the second David to land the race for him as he won with Dancing David in 2012.

Sir David’s first Gold Cup victory came via Bentom back in 1986. He was ridden by Venice Richards and trained by Ronald Burke. His second win was with Sandford Prince – again ridden by Venice Richards but trained by Arthur “Scobie” Breasley in 1989.provided him with two more wins – in 1991 and 1992 – with the same jockey/trainer combination of Richards and Breasley; while Chou Chou Royale gave him a hat-trick of victories by taking the race in 1993. He was again trained by Breasley but ridden by Irish jockeySandy Hawlley.

Breasley actually became the first trainer to have three Gold Cup winners (1991-1993), but this was later surpassed by William “Bill” Marshall who had four successive Gold Cup wins between 2000 and 2003. Three of those wins came from Blast Of Storm in successive years 2000 to 2002.

Sir David had to wait a further 19 years – 2012 to be exact – to land another Gold Cup victory and that was with Dancing David in 2012, and as mentioned earlier Aristodemus made it two wins in-a-row for him by winning the following year.

The only other owners beside Sir David with more than two Gold Cup victories are Sally Arbib and Gay Smith, both of whom have three wins againsttheir names.

Arbib’s three were the hat-trick of wins by Blast Of Storm as noted earlier, while Smith’s three were through Thady Quill (2003), Sharp Impact (2006), and Zoom (2011).

Zoom was actually the third creole to win the race, with the first being Incitatus (1997) and Federico (1998).